While the knowledge that there are uninsured drivers out there looking to damage my cars, the bellow suggestion just doesn't seem right. Or does it? Cameras at U.K. gas stations will block uninsured drivers from refueling | The Sideshow - Yahoo! News
I agree. No license or no insurance and you should not be able to drive. My area has many none licensed and none insured drivers that are only lightly punished when caught so there is no incentive for them to get a license or insurance. The majority of accidents in my area are associated with drivers with no license or no insurance. Somehow this has to stop.
Yeah, but how is this proposed method supposed to solve anything. The article stated that after they captured the plate info the person could still fill up and drive off anyway. So all it's going to do as I see it is capture more data about you. Do you really want your plate number grabbed every time you get gas? Yeah...Yeah...I know, if you aren't doing anything wrong it doesn't matter. Yes it does, it's yet another small erosion of your ability to travel about freely without being tracked.
I go back and forth on these issues too.....I want the uninsured and drunk drivers off the road, but of course that still leaves the inexperienced and stupid drivers - those yakking on their cells and texting and so on, and like Ron White says, you can't fix stupid. The UK has cameras everywhere already, in downtown London they're on every corner and most of the buildings, so it's not like a precedent hasn't already been set - there. So I can see them thinking this is just the next logical step in the use of the technology. They also already capture plate info coming into London for those car charges - pollution charges or whatever they call them..... How would this work for the guy who just wants to buy a gallon of gas for the lawnmower? What if he rode up on a bicycle? Have to admit tho, no insurance, no license, no gas has a lot of appeal......
The sad situation is both here (US) and there (GB) there is probably enough laws on the books to handle situations like these. All that's required is enforcement. Enforcement, however is not what the politicians get paid for. They get paid to make laws. And mostly they get paid by those who will benefit from those laws being written. In this particular case, it seems like Ernst & Young would see a nice new revenue stream from administering and "Connecting the existing technology ... [it] is relatively inexpensive and wouldn't be a big information technology program." I would venture that when E&Y did a cost benefit analysis of income vs. citizenry's privacy rights, the former won hands down.
One thing.... What about buying fuel for offroad use... Like a lawnmower or generator or even ATV... While insurance is important, i do live in a state it is optional....strange thing is, out insurance rates are cheaper than negiboring states (even heavily regulated mass), and a higher percent of folks have valid insurance....many folks in neighboring states buy it...get the paperwork, then cancel.... LIVE FREE OR DIE...the New Hampshire state motto...and we mean it!! Just wish Texas was our neighbor, rather than Massachusetts....
This sounds like one of those good ideas that hasn't been thought right the way through. Like you can't buy petrol/gas if you park so close to the car in front that the camera can't see the plate? ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) cameras have changed the policing of roads here in Britain and it seems likely that all countries will follow suit eventually. It does require a standard font for plates, so that the cameras can read them easily/quickly and in the US it would be hard to set up with state-level databases and national-level cameras. But the impact is undeniable - those driving without insurance are more likely to also not have a licence or be disqualified (the penalty for a first drink-driving offence here is 12 months' disqualification), or have stolen the vehicle, or have drugs in the vehicle, or have drugs in the driver. And many police cars have an ANPR camera that's alwasy switched on so that all vehicles it passes, or vice versa, are checked automatically - this is the big change as the police are actively given a reason to stop the vehicle. And yes, Big Brother can follow a vehicle all over Britain - of course this is because the vehicle has number plates on it, as the cameras just make it easier/cheaper to do. Anyone worried about invasion of privacy needs to get the number plates removed from vehicles as they are the real threat to liberty. What, you say, they've been on our vehicles for the last hundred years? :confused5:
Even with something like this in place, there is no real way to ever stop someone from driving a car w/o a license or insurance. It is just to easy to get a car and drive it, either from friends, family or the street corner cheapo car lot. Now if they could co-ordinate the info from the insurance companies and the DMV's so that if the insurance on the car went expired, then the registration went with it........hmmm and then we could have electronic plates that were updated with the current registration status each time you got gas.
That is what they did some years ago - 1) the insurance companies must record if a policy exists for a particular vehicle on a central database; 2) after three years the car must have an annual roadworthiness inspection; 3) owners have to buy an annual car tax sticker (and you have to prove the car is insured and roadworthy to get the sticker). All three of these are in central databases and in-car police cameras download a daily national list of registrations which are invalid - if they see that registration, they sound a warning and display the reason it's invalid. In addition, the police can put a marker on a car on their own national system, for example if the vehicle is suspected of being used in crimes, and that info is displayed as well. Proper Big Brother stuff - and it's catching lots of criminals. The downside, as I see it, is that the police get so many 'good targets' that they no longer spend much time stopping people who are just driving badly! The nice thing is that for law-abiding citizens, the annual car tax has got much simpler - I used to have to take my paper insurance certificate, my paper roadworthiness certificate and my paper registration document to a post office to purchase a new car tax sticker. Nowadays all that checking is done online between the databases, so I can buy my annual car tax online too and it arrives in the post. Sweet.